{"id":119,"date":"2019-11-13T15:16:00","date_gmt":"2019-11-13T15:16:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/adrianharris.org\/blog\/?p=119"},"modified":"2020-05-07T10:38:59","modified_gmt":"2020-05-07T10:38:59","slug":"the-wilderness-effect","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/adrianharris.org\/blog\/2019\/11\/13\/the-wilderness-effect\/","title":{"rendered":"The Wilderness Effect"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Ecopsychologist Rob Greenway used to guide people on wilderness treks and after years of research concluded that \u201ccivilization is only four days deep\u201d (Greenway, 1995). When people go on long treks in the wilderness they start out enthusiastic: They\u2019re feeling excited and looking forward to the coming adventure. But after a couple of days of hard walking, most begin to get uncomfortable. It\u2019s not just aching muscles that are the problem; people start to miss the familiar civilized world that they\u2019re habituated to. \u201cThere\u2019s no fricking phone signal out here!\u201d \u201cWhen do we get to have shower?\u201d \u201cDamn, it\u2019s quiet \u2026\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But something profound happens after about 72 hours of being in the wilderness. Rob found that almost everyone experienced \u201can increased sense of aliveness\u201d and \u201cfeelings of expansion or reconnection\u201d. Rob calls this phenomena \u201cthe wilderness effect\u201d and it\u2019s one of the best established theories in ecopsychology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was hugely excited when I first read about the wilderness effect. It seemed to offer a powerful way to reconnect people with nature, and maybe transform our relationship to the world. My excitement was short lived however. The effect Rob had observed happened on extended trips into the American wilderness, so there\u2019s no way to bring it to the millions who yearn for it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But years later I had an experience that opened my eyes to another possibility. I was living on a road protest site and while it was far from being pristine wilderness, life there slowly deepened my connection to nature. Could it be that something like the wilderness effect happens when we spend a lot of quality time in urban nature?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A
Life in the woods<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

The short answer is yes; ecopsychologists generally agree that \u201csimply spending meaningful time communing with nature\u201d is beneficial (Shaw, 2006) and the full-on wilderness effect is a difference of degree rather than a difference in kind. I\u2019ve written about this in detail elsewhere <\/a>and I\u2019ll be developing these thoughts in later posts, but for now I\u2019ll close with a quote from Jim Hindle. Jim lived amongst the trees at the Newbury protest site and beautifully describes how his awareness was transformed by that experience:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI became accustomed to the sound of the wind in the trees at all times. It wasn\u2019t a thing I necessarily listened to, but the silence that fell whenever I stepped inside a building was eerie and disquietening. \u2026 It was like being connected to a great river, the source of all life \u2026 and years of separation between us and the Land were falling away like an old skin\u201d
(Hindle, 2006).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n